Matériaux

Domaine d'activité

Types d'essais

Unlike boxing, Tae Kwondo is scored primarily on a system of points allocation, knockouts being avoided at all costs. Competitors are encouraged to land only light blows; as points are recorded by digital sensors a strike is recorded or it isn’t – the force applied is not considered. However, this does not prevent accidents or cheating which could cause serious injury. Fortunately a range of protective equipment is available to cover vulnerable parts of the body.

Protective martial arts equipment should be rigorously tested to international standards like BS EN 13277. This standard specifies an impact test using a drop-tower such as the CEAST 9350 drop tower. The 9350 is a versatile drop tower with an energy range of between 0.59 and 757 joules which perfectly fulfills the requirement for tests of between 3 and 12 joules as stated in BS EN 13277; the requirement to measure force up to 3kN is easily satisfied with our standard instrumented piezoelectric tup. Moreover, the data acquisition rate of 2MHz means that the results will be of superb accuracy, enabling the study of failure modes and transient vibrations. Additionally the large base makes the CEAST 9350 highly adaptable for all manner of testing solutions.

Safety in Tae Kwondo is not just limited to competitors striking each other, however. Falls, despite being mitigated against, are almost inevitable and the fighting surface must be flexible enough to sufficiently dampen the impact of the fall. BS EN 12503 comprehensively describes appropriate properties for sports mats with a variety of end purposes. In particular, 'Judo' mats must withstand an impact in free-fall from up to 600mm with an 8kg striker and respond with less than 90g of acceleration (equivalent to less than 7.2kN, in this instance). Together with a custom base, this test is again made possible by the CEAST 9350 drop tower.

Both sets of testing would be performed with a custom striker and a series of specialized fixtures. This ability to adapt to new and exotic standards and requirements is a strength of our CEAST Custom Product design team, who are able to provide a broad range of modifications to our core machines. The ability of this machine to quickly and easily switch bases means that a single system can test all types of equipment.

Impact resistance is one of the most important properties for component designers to consider, as well as the most difficult to quantify. Impact resistance is a critical measure of service life and more importantly these days, it involves the perplexing problem of product safety and liability. With the combined experience of Dynatup® and CEAST, Instron® has more than 80 years experience in designing impact testing systems to simulate real-life impact conditions.